Twelve Quickies Of Christmas 12: Christmas Angel

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Nicole allowed herself to be wooed. David spent several evenings over very expensive meals trying, in the flat nasal tones of the Midwest, to impress her. He was even interesting, in his wholesome way. His eyes lit when, one July evening, she invited him back to her flat for a nightcap.

  Nicole was almost angry at David’s careful foreplay. She wanted a fast and furious fuck, mindless sex that would make her forget herself and—above all—forget Alessandro.

  David was determined to turn it into lovemaking. He was a very good kisser but she didn’t want kisses, and she finally just turned her head to avoid them. He tried to arouse her with careful caresses but Nicole didn’t want that, either. All she wanted was for him to fuck her, hard, in the dark. The hell with foreplay.

  She was relieved when he finally mounted her, kneeing her legs apart.

  This was what she wanted. A man’s weight on her, a man’s penis poised to enter her. Fast, hard fucking.

  Except that the shoulders she clutched weren’t broad. His chest was almost hairless. When she reached for his penis to guide him to her, he was nicely erect but small and narrow.

  He wasn’t Alessandro.

  Even in the dark, she couldn’t pretend he was Alessandro.

  Every muscle she had tightened. Her entire body closed in on itself in rejection and David couldn’t penetrate.

  When David levered himself up on his forearms in surprise, Nicole suddenly pushed him off her and ran into the bathroom. She locked the door, slid down to the floor in the dark and rested her forehead on her knees, shaking with deep tremors. She fought against it, arms crossed tightly around her midriff in an attempt at control, but it was no use. She finally gave in to bitter, helpless tears.

  She wept in silence, in the dark, grieving for her lost love, her lost womanhood, her lost soul…

  When, finally, she found the courage to go back, swollen-eyed, into the bedroom, David was gone. He’d quietly put his clothes back on and left the madwoman’s house.

  The next day at work, two-dozen yellow roses arrived for her. Two-dozen yellow roses in Amman in summer were a minor miracle and must have cost a fortune. David’s note was short and very sweet: I’m sorry it didn’t work out.

  That was when Nicole realized she had to leave Amman if she was to keep even a scrap of her sanity.

  She was for a new posting anyway. She was high up, with a good reputation, a rising star. She had some leeway in choosing. Friends back at the State Department told her what her choices were: Kabul or Harare.

  The choice was clear. Another poor dusty desert Islamic city would only remind her of Alessandro. Better war-torn Africa. She chose Zimbabwe and started boning up on the tormented political history of East Africa.

  To her horror, however, when she opened the envelope with her new assignment, she read: Consulate in Naples, Italy. Nothing she could do—phone calls to Washington, increasingly frantic letters, contacting everyone she knew who had some pull at State—none of it made any difference at all.

  Though she’d fought the posting with every atom of her being, she fell in love with the city from the first day. She’d landed on an early November morning, sunny and warm, and had spent her first day walking the streets, dazzled at the beauty and liveliness.

  Maybe, just maybe, she thought, it would be Naples, of all places, that would heal her wounded spirit.

  Certainly this view over the bay was enough to soothe the most troubled soul.

  The faint sound of music from the baroque quartet playing in the ballroom filtered out into the terrace, but Nicole had no desire to return to the reception. Though it was Christmas Eve, it was warm outside, a gentle breeze coming off the bay. One of the cruise ships sounded its bass horn and the ferryboat to Ischia answered in a treble toot. She thought she could hear laughter on the wind.

  Christmas Eve.

  A full year had gone by since Alessandro.

  For the first time in a long time, hope stirred faintly in her heart. If she could survive one year, why then she could survive two, three, four. At some point in the future, an entire day would go by without thinking of Alessandro. It wasn’t much to look forward to, but it was more than she’d had this past year.

  Music billowed out from the big double doors as they opened. So someone else wanted to enjoy the unusually balmy evening. That was fine. It was a big terrace and Nicole knew she carried an aura of solitude about her. No one would bother her. Maybe she’d just spend the whole evening out here. Let the entire diplomatic community get to know her as an eccentric loner.

  Footsteps. A man’s footsteps behind her. Nicole could feel her back muscles stiffen. Couldn’t he see she wanted to be alone?

  “Signora.” A young man’s voice. “Questo è per Lei.” This is for you, ma’am.

  Nicole turned to see the young waiter in 17th century livery. He was holding a silver salver. On it was a painted wooden angel. Curious, Nicole picked it up and the waiter disappeared.

  How odd.

  She turned the angel in her hands. In the short time she’d been here, Nicole had realized that Naples specialized in Christmas and nativity scene figures. Entire narrow streets were given over to artisans crafting the lovely figurines of papier machè and wood. It was a centuries-old tradition and antique figurines fetched thousands of dollars. The churches had exquisite nativity scenes with hundreds of shepherds and Magis and baby Jesuses, three-dimensional works of art.

  The angel in her hands was an antique and beautiful, the loving work of an artist craftsman, perfect in every detail, from the lovely oval face to the billowing folds of her white satin gown. Nicole stroked the cheek and smiled.

  “I told you she looked just like you,” a deep voice said and Nicole froze. As she lifted her eyes, the hairs on the nape of her neck rose. The hands holding the angel started trembling.

  She could barely make out the figure in the shadows, but she’d recognize that voice anywhere, even in hell.

  “I’m so happy to see you, cara,” the deep voice said. Alessandro stepped out of the shadows.

  Her fingers were too numb to hold on to the beautiful angel and it slipped from her grasp. A wild wind sounded in her head and her knees buckled.

  Alessandro cursed and sprang forward. He’d planned it all so carefully, the setting, the timing. He knew it was going to be tricky, knew he wouldn’t have much time to make his case, but he hadn’t counted on Nicole fainting.

  He caught her just as she fell. He staggered.

  She’d lost a lot of weight but so had he. He was barely back on his feet. Though he’d carried her with ease in Amman—had gloried in carrying her in his arms to bed—he could barely manage to hold her now.

  But with his dying breath, on his knees, he could carry Nicole.

  Nicole was his, to love and cherish to the end of time.

  He needed a place where they could be private and he knew where. He was familiar with every single inch of the French Consulate. It had been in the della Torre family for two hundred years, named after his great, great, great-grandmother, Loredana della Torre, and had been sold only twenty years ago to the French Foreign Ministry to serve as their Consulate. He knew its nooks and crannies and knew where they could find privacy.

  Alessandro carried Nicole into the Sala Della Regina—the Queen’s Room. The room where the future Queen of Italy, Margherita, accepted the proposal of the King of Savoy.

  There was a Recamier couch, basically a queen-sized bed. He carefully placed Nicole on it, then turned to lock the door. No one would bother them, he knew.

  He was sweating with exertion as he returned to Nicole, sliding on his knees by her side.

  All his life he’d been strong. His current weakness was a curse, bearable only because it meant he was alive. For too many months he’d hovered in that twilight area between life and death.

  “Alessandro?” Nicole whispered. Her eyes moved over his face, unfocused.

  “Yes, amore mio.” He tenderly moved aside a heavy lock of dark shiny
hair to run the back of his forefinger down the side of her face. Her cheekbones were more prominent, the skin more delicate, infinitely pale. She looked fragile. Too fragile.

  Together they’d put back on the weight they’d lost over the past horrible year. They’d stuff each other with food in bed. Food and sex, the eternal healers.

  Nicole would go back to being the glorious woman he’d first met a year ago in Amman. Nothing, however, would ever turn the clock back for him. He’d carry the scars on his body for the rest of his life.

  Nicole blinked, then opened her eyes wide. She had the most beautiful eyes Alessandro had ever seen. Cat’s eyes, green and intelligent. She blinked again, awareness returning with every passing second. The expression in those gorgeous eyes turned from bewildered, to astonished, to cool.

  “Alessandro. Well. This is a…surprise.” Her voice was firm now, and she was trying to sit up.

  In a sudden electric rush of understanding, Alessandro knew if she got up now, she’d walk right out of the room and out of his life. He would lose her forever.

  No. His entire body rejected the notion. Nicole was his, body and soul. He needed to claim her body as his, now. The hell with explanations, he needed her body. Her soul would follow.

  He kissed her. At first to shut her up but, after a second, he lost himself in the kiss.

  It had been exactly this way the first time he’d kissed her, in his car outside the Italian Embassy in Amman. It had taken every crumb of self-control not to strip her in his car and make love right there in his Alfa Romeo, like a horny teenager. God knew she made him feel like a horny teenager. He hadn’t been deprived of sex at all, yet he had fucked Nicole during the one-week fate had allotted them as if he’d spent the past 20 years alone on a desert island.

  He held her head, licking his tongue into her mouth. Her taste hadn’t changed.

  The first four months, he hadn’t been able to eat and had had to be fed parenterally with constant IV lines. The memory of the taste of Nicole’s mouth had sustained him.

  He could feel the warfare going on in her body, mind trying to reject him, heart opening to him.

  Yes. Her heart was his, too. All of her was his.

  Alessandro deepened the kiss, rejoicing when she returned it. He made love to Nicole’s mouth, as he’d made love to her breasts and her butterfly.

  Nicole had been charmed when he’d told her that the name used by Italian kids for the female genitalia was ‘farfalla’, butterfly. They’d joked about her butterfly, about how well suited it was to him, about its moods and whimsies.

  He knew Nicole’s butterfly like he knew his cock. Everything it wanted, everything it desired, what made it purr, what turned it off, what made it tick.

  It was ticking now, he could feel it, though he wasn’t in her yet.

  He wanted to be inside her butterfly as fast as was humanly possible.

  Only recently was he able to even think of it. His cock had been dead meat for nine long months. He might as well have had a cylindrical piece of wood between his legs. Then in September, when he was first able to sit up unaided, a very attractive nurse had washed him and his cock had stirred. She’d been an intelligent woman and it amused her. She knew perfectly well that an erection, even a half-assed one, was a major accomplishment for him, a man who should have been dead in the ground nine months before. She’d smiled, given him an extra long swipe over his rising cock and left.

  Alessandro hadn’t wanted the nurse, he’d wanted Nicole. The erection had been an automatic response of his body, one he wouldn’t have given a thought to a year ago. But right then, it had been a fucking miracle. The very first sign that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to get his life and Nicole back.

  It was as if the hard-on were a signal that his body was coming back from the near-dead. The next week, he stood up on his own for the first time, and the week after, he started walking. Up and down the hospital corridor, it was true, but walking under his own steam.

  That was when he’d first started making plans to get Nicole back, calling in favors. Now that he knew he wasn’t going to die, he wasn’t going to be a useless, impotent invalid, he could start dreaming again. Hoping and planning to put the shattered pieces of his life back together.

  He’d moved mountains to ensure that Nicole be posted to Naples.

  The Americans owed him, and he’d made sure they realized it. His former boss had called in favors with them, too.

  So Nicole had been in Naples, his city, breathing his same air, for about six weeks now. He hadn’t wanted to make his move until he was sure he could stay on his feet for more than an hour at a time.

  Right now, he didn’t have to be on his feet, he was lying next to Nicole and his cock had sprung to full life. She excited him as no other woman ever had and no other woman ever would.

  “Cara, dolcissima,” he murmured against her mouth. She’d loved it when he spoke Italian to her. He bit, lightly, her lower lip, rejoicing when she shivered.

  She’d loved everything he’d ever done to her. Her hot responses drove him wild. She drew in a deep breath to say something and he covered her mouth again.

  Now wasn’t the time for words. Words would come later, together with explanations. Now was for the magic their bodies could create.

  Kissing her deeply, Alessandro lifted Nicole so he could unzip her ball gown, an elegant confection of emerald green silk, the color exactly matching her eyes. Hands trembling, he pulled the bodice off her shoulders and down to her waist. If she wanted to protest, he wouldn’t let her. He couldn’t release her mouth to save his life.

  He could tell by touch that she had on one of her expensive lacy bras, the ones that drove him wild. This one had a front clasp and in a second it fell away. Ah, there she was. Round and—yes!—her nipples were hard. With a trembling hand he moved lower, impatiently tearing away her panties—Nicole should never wear underwear around him—and slid his hand there, where he wanted his cock. Right into her butterfly.

  She was wet. Nicole had once confessed that she started getting wet the instant she saw him. Which was a good thing because the first fuck was always frantic. He often remembered about foreplay after he was already in her.

  This was going to be one of those times.

  After a year’s absence, Nicole would want wooing, gentle words, explanations. That would all come later. Now, right now, he needed to be inside her, to claim her and in doing so, to claim his lost life back.

  A swipe of his hands and Nicole was naked. He couldn’t undress, not yet. Not until he was certain Nicole was his again. He wasn’t a pretty sight. He had to be looked at through the eyes of love. So all he did was unzip and open his silk briefs. His cock sprang out.

  He held her face still for his kisses while he mounted her. He didn’t need to guide his cock into her. It knew where to go all on its own.

  Alessandro slid into her, into his own little butterfly. Their lips parted as both exhaled on a soft shaky moan at being together again. He dug his fingers into her scalp, into the mass of fragrant hair and shut his eyes so she wouldn’t see the tears.

  This was what he’d thought of constantly as he fought death. Being inside Nicole again.

  He tasted her mouth, her cheeks, the soft spot behind her ear. He inhaled deeply, the smell of her filling his head. He inhaled again and rotated his cock, feeling every centimeter of her tightly clasped around him.

  She hadn’t been with another man. He’d have smelled it, felt it.

  It had been his deepest dread that she would find someone else. That another man would take his place in her bed, and in her butterfly.

  How any man could keep his hands off her, once he saw her, was a mystery to him. He’d been blown away, the first time he saw her at the Embassy Christmas party in Amman. The lovely new Americana all the men had been talking about. She carried an aura of remoteness and mystery about her, elegant inside and out, as self contained as a cat.

  Discreet inquiries informed him she wa
s unattached and had been for some time. Such a beautiful woman could be unattached only out of choice, because she was picky.

  And she was. His beautiful Nicole was finicky and fastidious about everything—what she ate, what she wore, what she read, the music she listened to, who she frequented. It was just one of the many things he found fascinating about her.

  Alessandro was a man of instinct. He trusted his head and his heart and his cock and all three proclaimed to him, loud and clear, this is the one. They’d only had a week, but he knew he would never be tired of her. She fascinated him on every level there was.

  The idea that some other man was with her, talking to her, laughing with her, fucking her, while he was chained to a hospital bed, had kept him awake more than the pain.

  He had to be certain, had to hear it from her.

  He pressed into her deeply, feeling her sharp hipbones cut into him. Her hips had been soft, generous before. He stroked deeply once, twice, then stopped.

  “There hasn’t been another man here this past year, has there?” He whispered the words, holding her head tightly. He forced himself to keep his eyes open and on hers.

  “No.” Nicole’s voice was low, steady. Sadness was in her eyes. “I tried, but I couldn’t do it.”

  Her words set him off.

  Alessandro closed his eyes in relief, resting his forehead against hers, and started climaxing. He had no control at all over his cock, couldn’t hold it back if he tried. His semen jetting into her set Nicole off, too, her little butterfly clutching his cock tightly, milking him.

  Alessandro moaned as his hips thrust against hers. There wasn’t time for more than a few short strokes and then he had to stop, overwhelmed with the electric climax roaring through him, his entire body pulsing in time with his cock.

  He simply rode it out, letting it wipe his mind clear, rejoicing in his first orgasm in a year.

  It didn’t matter that he’d come immediately. It just meant that he would slide in and out of Nicole more easily from then on. He smiled against her hair. His love had a small little butterfly and the second time they always found it easier for him to fuck her, once his seed was in her.